Reviewing Larkin

Have produced 400 words on Larkin's poem This Be The Verse, talked about it with Peter, who said about the title, subjunctive, slightly archaic, and that fits nicely with other things, like the missing Chapter of Chapter and Verse, the bit in the third stanza - Man hands on misery to man, and all the way through the poem, he leavens some of the ghastliness with winks and nudges, absolving some of the blame, and at the end returning to the almost conversational tone of the beginning , with double entendre - Get out as early as you can, / And don't have any kids yourself.

The poem is in Andrew Thwaite's 1988 Philip Larkin; Collected poems, The Marvell Press and faber and faber, p. 180.

Not much extra reading, apart from beginning to re-read The Price of Water in Finistere, by Bodil Malmsten. My recent education helps me look at it differently, I appreciate her writing all the more, I can see the poetry in it.